Stop elephant extinction

type:

Crowd Funding, Donation, NGO, Petition, Project

by:

Deniz Zehra Tavli

100 elephants a day are dying – shot sometimes from helicopters, their faces cut off by machetes often while still alive – just to produce ivory trinkets. What’s worse is that this savagery is managed by organised criminals who help fund some of the most dangerous terror groups in the world.

Killing elephants is serious business – as wild elephants die out, the price for stockpiles of ivory skyrockets. Now poachers are on a race to kill as many elephants as they can. The clock is against us and if the current rate of killing continues, in little more than a decade, there may be no wild elephants, only graves.

But now there’s reason to hope: China just announced it will phase out its ivory industry and there is legislation in eleven US states calling for a ban on ivory trading. It’s a tipping point moment in this fight for these majestic animals and we can make sure demand everywhere dries up by funding a flood of campaigns in the US, Thailand and Vietnam to kill the biggest ivory markets anywhere.

Pledge an amount for the avaaz-Team to fund their species-saving work and save our elephants!

BOROUME, which means “we can” in Greek, is a non-profit organization committed to reducing food waste and the distribution of surplus food for charity throughout Greece. Since its beginning in 2011 more than 2 million meals of surplus food have been donated to welfare organizations.

BOROUME is a communication hub between food donors and welfare organizations (welfare institutions, soup-kitchens, municipal social services) that creates “bridges” between those who have surplus food and wish to donate it and those who need it.

In the three years of its operation, BOROUME has created thousands of such “bridges”, often of permanent nature, and today offers on average more than 3.000 portions of food per day through its network.

Through its innovative model of utilizing food that otherwise would end in the garbage, its educational program and its awareness campaigns, BOROUME aims at creating a social movement against food waste.

Support this project by volunteering, donation of money or simply food!

Troops under al-Bashir’s command in Darfur have spent years attacking and destroying villages, chasing survivors into the dessert, surrounding refugee camps, killing almost 500,000 and uprooting millions of civilians from land they occupied for centuries. When applying for a warrant for his arrest, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said clearly that al-Bashir’s “intent was genocide” and that he wanted to erase the history of an entire people.

The ICC is still young and because of political maneuvers, al-Bashir has avoided arrest in several countries over the years. Some -- including the ANC -- have criticized the court for focusing on crimes in Africa. But most of the cases at the ICC were brought forward by the countries themselves and Sudan is one of just two cases where the Security Council managed to agree to bring perpetrators to the court. And when it comes to crimes as horrific as those in Darfur, its justice that should matter, not politics.

The law is clear -- South Africa is a member of the ICC and is required to cooperate with the arrest warrant. The ANC already tried to give al-Bashir immunity and political pressure could lead the court to give in, but a massive global outcry could create a media wave strong enough to keep politics out. Click now to show the South African government that the world expects justice:

For international law to work, there can’t be loopholes for international criminals. For there to be justice, our governments must put aside politics and act in the interests of humanity.

Join the petition and help ensure that Darfur’s victims finally get the justice they deserve.

In spring 2013 the founders of "Teachers on the Road" started a tour through more than 50 refugee shelters throughout Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse. On this tour they encountered numerous defiancies: Fully overcrowded and and down-and-out camps, lack of medical care, no access to the Internet and often no way for the refugees to learn German. This means total isolation for people.

When they asked the refugees about their concerns the most frequently expressed desire was to learn German as soon as possible.This is how Teachers on the road came to life. The aim is to break the isolation under which most refugees have to suffer and to allow them more social participation by learning the local language.

The project is now running for 2 years. In Frankfurt, Oberursel, Mainz, Darmstadt and Ludiwgshafen groups of voluntary teachers offer free lessons in German language 2-5 times per week for refugees. Since the start of the project a total of about 250 teachers teach refugees in Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate.

In order to expand the project to other regions of Germany and to carry out initiative events, "Teachers on the road" is dependent on donations. Also for the purchase of German books and to cover travel costs and printing costs for their self-created teaching materials, they are in need of funds. The project is constantly in need of people who would like to teach refugees in German or to assist them with administrative formalities or finding accommodation.

Support this important and meaningful project by donating or- if you are living in one of the German regions mentioned above- take action and become a teacher on the road!

Governments are snooping on everything we do online. State intelligence and security agencies are using mass surveillance to hoover up our private emails, calls, internet searches, contact lists, phone locations, webcam images and more.

In particular, the intelligence services of the five English-speaking countries Australia, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States ("Five Eyes" -Alliance) are hoarding and organizing informations for decades, including information obtained through mass surveillance.

The UN Human Rights stated in a resolution of 5 July 2012 that "the same rights that people have offline, also need to be protected online". Monitoring shall only take place if there is an actual suspicion and surveillance becomes necessary, proportionate and arranged judicially.

Everyone can be affected by mass surveillance today ....Get active! Sign the petition and ask the governmets of the "Five Eyes" to stop their programs for mass surveillance!

The Artist Protection Fund (APF) is a three-year pilot program at the Institute of International Education. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, APF will make life-saving fellowship grants to threatened artists from any field of artistic endeavor, and place them at host universities and arts centers in safe countries where they can continue their work.

The Institute welcomes expressions of interest from arts organizations around the world interested in hosting threatened artists. Hosts can be traditional university art education programs and arts residencies, as well as arts centers, performing arts organizations and less traditional artistic communities. Hosts will be requested to match the fellowship support, through contributions that may include housing, studio space, art supplies, and other support from their networks.

The Institute welcomes inquiries from threatened artists directly or from individuals or institutions nominating threatened artists for support. APF is for artists who are facing or have recently fled from immediate, severe, and targeted threats to their lives and/or careers in their home countries or countries of residence. Information on how to apply will be available in the autumn of 2015.

A recent decision by the Obama administration put Shell a step closer to drilling in the icy waters of the Alaskan Arctic. Amongst the growing industry and investor scepticism about the safety and value of offshore Arctic oil exploration, Shell is desperate to drill in the Arctic to increase its profits.

The US government’s own analysis estimates that there’s a 75% chance of a large oil spill if Shell is able to successfully extract oil from the Arctic. And industry experts say this would be virtually impossible to clean up.This is Shell’s vision of the future. The one they’re struggling to hide.

The good news is that the global movement to protect the Arctic and our climate is growing stronger by the day. And you can be a part of this movement.

Watch and share this film with your friends and family to make sure Shell doesn’t get away with it. Sign the petition and help Save the Arctic!

At Muala Prison in Malawi, the prisoners sleep on the concrete floor, so tightly packed they cannot turn except en masse. Some cells hold 160 prisoners. A daily meal consists of one portion of porridge while they have to spend 14 hours each day in a cell, unable even to move. The water is dirty; the toilets foul. Disease is rife.

The inhumanity of African prisons is a shame that hides in plain sight. Black Beach Prison in Equatorial Guinea is notorious for torture. Food is so scarce in Zambia’s jails that gangs wield it as an instrument of power. Congo’s prisons have housed children as young as eight. Kenyan prisoners perish from easily curable diseases like gastroenteritis.

Some of Africa’s one million or so prisoners - nobody knows how many - are not lawbreakers, but victims of incompetence or corruption or justice systems that are simply understaffed, underfinanced and overwhelmed. Kenya’s former prisons commissioner suggested last year that with proper legal representation, a fifth of his nation’s 55,000 prisoners might be declared innocent.

The most immediate and apparent inhumanity is the overcrowding that Africa’s broken systems breed, compounded by disease, filth, abuse, and a lack of food, soap, beds, clothes or recreation. A survey of 27 African governments by Penal Reform International found that national prison systems operated, on average, at 141 percent of capacity. Individual prisons were even more jammed: Luzira Prison, Uganda’s largest, holds 5,000 in a 1950’s facility built for 600.

SAVE A LIFE wants to offer information through their website to support awareness of the inhumane circumstances which Africa's prisoners have to endure. There are several ways one can help and make a difference in a prisoners life. Write a prisoner a personal letter and make his day, send a care package or participate in one of their campaigns by signing a petition against violations of human rights and social injustice as it prevails in Africa's prisons.

The most persecuted peoples are right now taking to ‘floating coffins’ to flee violence and seek sanctuary for their families. But instead of responding with humanity, the governments of the Global North are closing their doors, letting those who need a safe shelter, food and medical care, starve and drown at sea. The Mediterranean and Andaman Seas are becoming graveyards.

Burma is driving the Rohingya out, and thousands of families are drifting helplessly at sea, forced to drink their own urine because Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia had turned them away. Syrians and Africans risk drowning every week off the coast of Southern Europe, braving the terrifying crossing as their last hope to escape torture, hunger, and traffickers.

This is the biggest refugees crisis since World War II, but so far governments have let them die in a climate of rising xenophobia.

A small donation would help funding rescue operations at sea; building an Avaaz refugee team to assist those missions and resettlement, and create effective lobby cells to get leaders to open up borders; and launch ads to counter the racism.

Together we can help rescue refugees, and rescue our shared humanity. Pledge to urgently launch the Avaaz refugee campaign - Avaaz will only process your donations if it is raised enough to start saving lives.

In order to shed light on Black women’s experiences with police violence, the African American Policy Forum, in partnership with One Billion Rising, BYP100, The Stop Mass Incarceration Network, Black Lives Matter NYC, and many other community organizations will hold #SayHerName: A Vigil in Remembrance of Black Women and Girls Killed by the Police.

The event will lift up the stories of Tanisha Anderson, Rekia Boyd, Miriam Carrey, Michelle Cusseaux, Shelly Frey, and Kayla Moore - women who died due to police violence. These deaths have gone primarily ignored, unaccounted for and unpunished. Although Black women are killed, raped and beaten by the police, their experiences are rarely foregrounded in our popular understanding of racialized state violence.

For the first time the family members of these women are coming together to create a space to honor their lost loved ones.

Join this event on Wednesday, May 20 at 5:30pm, Union Square South, NYC and take part in this moment of remembrance and sympathy.